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Widgets Magazine

The best PC game I'll probably never get to play

The best PC game I'll probably never get to play

Several years ago, I read an issue of PC Gamer where they talked about some of the best PC games ever made. One of the games was a little title called System Shock 2. I completely forgot about the game until I discovered GOG.

That was when I found out how fantastic the game was, how brilliant the gameplay was, and how it was almost pants-wettingly scary at times, with the creepy AI SHODAN lurking everywhere watching you.

And then I found out the horrible reality: The chances of the game being released digitally, even on a service as big as Steam, were slim due to the rights being broken up.

Then I found out the worst part: Used copies of the game run for exorbitantly high prices, and it's not guaranteed to run well on modern PCs without massive amounts of tweaking and modifications.

This upsets me greatly. Even with the acquisition of several old EA titles, GOG has said they are unable to obtain the rights all because of a massive screw up on behalf of Looking Glass, Irrational Games, EA, and god knows who else. As a result of all of this, one of the best PC games of all time only exists in a "keep circulating the CDs" state (not counting the numerous people who have probably pirated the game because they took one look at eBay and Amazon prices and had massive heart attacks), with no way of being released digitally in the foreseeable future.

The game deserves better than this. For something so highly regarded, why hasn't someone tried to convince EA or Irrational to find some way to sort all this out? Sadly, neither company may even care about past things, seeing how Irrational is hell bent on making the next Bioshock game and EA would rather release things on their own wretched Origin service.

I hope one day, one day, that I wake up and see that GOG finally has obtained the rights to System Shock 2. That day may never come, but GOG did mention in addition to their gloomy news about the rights that we should "never say never". I hope that rings true.